


Violet Archives

by TheGreatLibraryFangirl (Mazeem)



Category: The Great Library Series - Rachel Caine
Genre: Angst, Aromantic, Asexual Character, Asexual Relationship, Background Het, Canon Lesbian Character, Drabble, Drabble Collection, Everybody Lives, Everyone Is Gay, F/F, Femslash, Femslash February, First Dates, Iron Tower mentions: slavery, Minor Character(s), Minor Dario Santiago/Khalila Seif, POV Minor Character, Pre-Femslash, Queerplatonic Relationships, Rare Characters, Rare Pairings, apart from chapter 16, background Keria/Eskander - Freeform, crack ships, more like "Most of them are Bi!" but i understand that's not quite as popular
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-01
Updated: 2021-02-25
Packaged: 2021-03-12 06:33:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 17
Words: 2,608
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29131095
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mazeem/pseuds/TheGreatLibraryFangirl
Summary: A series of drabbles for Femslash February. There's not many speaking-role female characters in this series, particularly after the events of Sword and Pen, so it was a challenge!Note, chapter 16 is, um, not a drabble.
Relationships: Anit/Katja (The Great Library), Anit/Khalila Seif, Annis/Keria Morning, Annis/Morgan Hault, Celia Brightwell/Naomi Ebele, Greta Jones/Carole Vargas, Khalila Seif/Gargi Vachaknavi, Khalila Seif/Glain Wathen, Khalila Seif/Morgan Hault, Khalila Seif/Scholar Parker, Morgan Hault (The Great Library)/Izumi Himura (The Great Library), Morgan Hault/Gargi Vachaknavi, Morgan Hault/Sybilla, Sybilla (The Great Library)/Izumi Himura (The Great Library), Zara Cole/Nofret Alamsai
Comments: 22
Kudos: 3





	1. Zara Cole/Nofret Alamasi

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Readers: Who are these characters?
> 
> They are High Garda side characters. Zara Cole appears in most of the books, and has some unknown type of relationship/history with Niccolo Santi. 
> 
> Nofret Alamasi appears twice, once in Smoke and Iron as a captain in the Iron Tower, and once in Sword and Pen as Santi's capable second in command. This drabble gives a possibility for how those two roles connected.
> 
> "Santi's company is here. His lieutenant found some Burners in London to question and found out where you'd gone. She got the whole company sent to duty on the wall."
> 
> "[...]Changed her mind after the Artifex Magnus decided to execute a few of her soldiers for disloyalty."
> 
> Chapter 5, Ash and Quill, from Brendan to Jess via makeshift Codex. 
> 
> (Looking at the timeline of Ash and Quill, Zara has less than a week to get all of this done. She must have moved quickly.)
> 
> Content warnings: drinking, kissing, scheming

Another paper note on Captain Nofret Alamasi’s desk,

> _Fancy a drink?_

* * *

“Acting-Captain.” _I know about Santi_. _About your soldiers._

Zara winced and nodded, then pushed Alamasi against the wall, one knee between her thighs, mouth hot, hard and hungry. Hidden under the cover of their known dalliances, they hissed into each other’s ears:

“We go to Philadelphia tonight.”

“I can’t come!”

Zara bit her tongue as if in rebuke. “Wasn’t asking, Nofret. I need you to speed up that Tower transfer. I know Wolfe’s damned mother is dead, but they might still turn up.”

‘They.’ A gossamer-thin disguise for ‘Nic’.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Check out my plans in advance here: https://thegreatlibraryfangirl.tumblr.com/post/637764659194314752/femslash-february-plans


	2. Khalila/Morgan (kind of)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Calm down, the ring whispered. Breathe. Power flows around you. Power will come. Do not demand it."
> 
> "Around her, the room was glowing in lines and surfaces; the fish were individual moving lights. Quintessence all around her, as the ring had promised. She opened herself and waited and the power began to flow toward her. Don't pull, the ring whispered. Allow nature to balance itself. 
> 
> It takes too long, she argued. The ring seemed utterly unmoved by the concept of time. I have to hurry! I'm needed.
> 
> You are unique. But not alone. And demands are not needs."
> 
> Chapter 5, Sword and Pen
> 
> Content warnings: Future AU, Morgan Lives, character struggling with urges

Khalila’s office door flew open.

“The Obscurist Magnus, Archivist,” came the belated announcement.

“I wasn’t expect-!” Then Khalila processed Morgan’s strained expression, and the faded light of the ring. “Do I need to leave?”

Morgan shook her head. Khalila sighed with relief: Morgan only needed the peace of Khalila’s office for this over-reach, rather than locks and isolation.

She left her desk and knelt on the floor. Morgan sank down too, curled up tight. Khalila ached to hold and comfort her, but that would be one step too far.

“It will pass.”

Morgan smiled, ruefully.

They breathed together and waited.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oops this isn't very shippy ... just take my word for it that it is???
> 
> Obviously this is a #MorganLives AU, where she didn't trigger the Archive fire and (with difficulty) learnt how to be patient like the ring said. And if you read carefully Khalila does quite a lot of calming breathing - there's Thomas in Smoke and Iron, of course, but Jess also mentions Khalila teaching him, and she does it for herself at least twice that I can think of.


	3. Khalila/Glain (Khalila&Glain)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You get two here! I felt mildly inspired. 
> 
> Content warnings drabble 1: romance repulsion, open relationships, polyamory, queerplatonic partnership
> 
> Content warnings drabble 2: sparring (consensual violence)

Glain did not like cuddles. Khalila did.

Standing hugs made Glain feel trapped. Hugs while walking were worse. Was this a three-legged race?

Hugs begot heightened relationships, and those came with expectations - airy-fairy concepts of romance that made Glain cringe and worry.

But Khalila kept offering, as the years passed. Eventually Glain realised that it might be all right to have a deeper relationship, with Khalila’s desires met elsewhere.

So she had dinners with Khalila, and they discussed ambitions and their idiotic friends, and then Khalila curled on top of her like a cat and Glain wasn’t bothered at all.

* * *

Glain watched critically as Khalila disarmed Jess again

“Stop letting her off easy, Brightwell!”

Jess groaned and toppled forwards. “I’m _not_! You try!” He spat out sand. Glain nodded and stepped over him.

Khalila’s skin was shining with exertion too, and she was scowling. It wasn’t a very Archivist-like expression.

“Don’t you treat me delicately too!” she snapped. In answer Glain grabbed the practise knife and bowled her over.

“I never do, _chwaer_.” She rolled away, in case of retaliation. Khalila just held up her hand and Glain easily dragged her to her feet.

“Thank you for helping me practise.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is for my headcanon that Glain is ace and aro (asexual and aromantic). I generally headcanon her as romance-repulsed, and vary on whether or not she wants or enjoys sex. So this is her and Khalila in a queerplatonic relationship! (And probably implied Khalila/Dario, but hey, insert whoever you want there.)
> 
> Hope everything came across all right, 100 words is not a lot.


	4. Annis/Morgan

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Readers: who is Annis??
> 
> Annis is a Scottish Obscurist who appears in Smoke and Iron, and briefly in Sword and Pen. She was best friends with Wolfe’s mother Keria Morning, so is about 60. She helps Morgan out in Smoke and Iron and dies in Sword and Pen. Except she DIDN'T because I say so. #AnnisLives
> 
> The plain text for this drabble is here, but so is the link to the separate posting of it, where you can see it in an approximation of a WhatsApp chat! :D 
> 
> Tags for this chapter are (found in full on the separate post):  
>  **chat fic, Casual Sex, Embarrassment, Oral sex mentioned, Crack, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Age Difference, Older Woman/Younger Woman, Walking In On Someone**
> 
> (Note, the wordcount is a little spotty here. coding is not friendly to drabbles, I don't think.)
> 
> Content warnings: capslock abuse, bad text speak, casual sex mentioned (non-judgementally), oral sex mentioned, age difference, female/female sexual relationship mentioned, being walked in on during sex mentioned, mention of sexual relationship with unequal power differential (Santi/Dario)

Text with WhatsApp skin: [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/29195946)

Plain text:

SEPTEMBER 28, 2032

Morgan: no more coding class. ever.

  
Khalila: Why?

  
Morgan: remember that safety address I sent you? gorgeous older woman

  
Khalila: Yes! Do you need rescued???

  
Morgan: i need brain bleach and the ability to rewind time. or delete other people's memories

  
Khalila: What did you DO??

  
Morgan: i didn't do anything!! guess who swans into his AUNTIE'S house WHILE SHE'S EATING ME OUT IN THE LIVING ROOM.

  
Khalila: Is this your equivalent of Dario with Mr Santi in Powerhouse?

  
Morgan: YES!! i mean i wasn't actually having sex with him thank you for small mercies. but Professor Wolfe has seen my orgasm face. FUCK.


	5. Morgan/Gargi

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Who is Gargi?
> 
> Gargi Vachaknavi appears in Sword and Pen. She’s a long-dead woman with Obscurist/more than Obscurist powers who still lives on in some form inside the ring that Morgan puts on. 
> 
> Her canon timeline is extremely glitched, thank you Caine. Dates include >5000 years ago, or after 200AD, and she’s called both Archivist and Obscurist Magnus at different points. I prefer to just use Wikipedia's entry on the real person and fudge it from there.
> 
> Content warnings: first-person POV, canon character death (kind of??) referenced, references to sexual attraction, I suppose technically there's a hell of an age/experience gap here

Being in the ring is kind of like being alive, but kind of not. Kind of like being everywhere else, but not.

This is the sort of mind-bender that I have to put up with these … days?

Time period? Time? Hold on …

Gargi says no to time.

“How else would I look like this, Morgan?”

I’ll admit, Gargi Vachaknavi looks good for someone who’s … however many thousands of years old.

We can touch, if we want to. Or more. There are no limits in here.

Maybe I’ll send Jess a few dreams. That shouldn’t be too disruptive.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yes Morgan, send Jess sexy dreams LOL
> 
> (is this the first time I've ever written 1st person PoV for this fandom? Savour it, I hate that PoV lol)


	6. Annis/Keria

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings: Just ... the Iron Tower ..., routine rape referenced except everyone is simultaneously raped and rapist I guess, forced breeding program mentioned, references to Keria/Eskander forced sex, female/female sexual relationship mentioned, female friends with benefits, is any sex in the Tower fully consensual? Who knows?

Same-sex relationships weren’t unusual in the Tower. If anything, they were quietly encouraged; jokingly called ‘comfort couplings,’ and used to soften the ghoulish experience of matching sexual partners on power and reproductive probability alone.

Keria had never truly appreciated the value of that pre-existing relationship until the first time that she trudged back from her assigned fuck with Eskander, head spinning and heartsore, and found herself in the comfortable territory of Annis’ bed before she quite knew what was happening. 

It was a bitter, selfish sort of mercantile love to introduce into a friendship, but the Tower had survived worse.


	7. Morgan/Sybilla

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Readers: Who tf is Sybilla??
> 
> Sybilla is an Obscurist who appears in Paper and Fire. She falls in love with Morgan during the six months Morgan spends there. She confesses her feelings to Morgan, and Morgan “felt awful” about telling her “I couldn’t be with her.” Morgan promised to help her, but then ran away without telling her. Sybilla tried to commit suicide after that, but survives.
> 
> Content warnings: epistolary format, Iron Tower captivity/lifelong slavery mentioned, primary attraction of unknown type mentioned)

**From an old journal entry of Obscurist Sybilla, lent to Chief Printer Jess Brightwell upon request**

> Someone new arrived today. It’s gone all round the Tower.
> 
> Morgan Hault.
> 
> She’s English, and she’s the oldest new arrival I’ve ever heard of. Rumours say that the Obscurist Magnus went to get her personally. I can see why. She radiates power like the sun.
> 
> Radiates anger, too. I don’t blame her. I remember what arrival was like, and I was only ten. It must be so much harder when you’re older.
> 
> _~~She’s so pretty. I wonder what she looks like when she smiles.~~ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One day I'll figure something out properly for this ship. This, again, isn't all that femslashy, I apologise.


	8. Khalila/Gargi

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings: background Khalila/Dario, background het, sex dream, sex dream that's been communicated intentionally, consent issues with that

Khalila woke hot and achy between her legs for the third night in a row. With a grumbly sigh, she rolled over in bed and got out her Codex to write the dream down again. Elements of it kept changing, but the overall similarities were so constant that it didn’t seem … natural.

Beside her, Dario rolled over. “Sex dream with the random woman again?” he mumbled.

“You just want the lurid details.”

“Define lurid. And, yes.”

She reached out absentmindedly to pat his hair, then blinked and stared at her outstretched hand. Connection made.

“I was wearing a ring.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What on earth is Gargi doing? Just trying to get Khalila's attention? Who knows?
> 
> (I continue to be unable to avoid my OTP, my apologies for putting brief m/f in femslash february.)


	9. Khalila/Anit

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Readers: Anit???
> 
> She's a very prominent side character who appears in four out of five books, but sure I'll be nice. Anit is a fellow book-smuggler, and fellow heir to a smuggling throne. She's aged roughly fifteen by the end of the series, if you trust Jess' age estimations (which have been canonically inaccurate). Her and Khalila play verbal chess on her ship in Smoke and Iron, and then she kills her father, Red Ibrahim, to save Jess. In Sword and Pen she helps our main characters hunt the Archivist. Wants to set up a bookshop with Jess at the end of the series. 
> 
> I love her a lot. 
> 
> Content warnings: allusion to canon patricide, embarrassment, first date

My father would kill me for this, Anit thought. That was her mantra for making decisions, even if it held a truth so sharp that only Jess understood.

She knocked too firmly on the door in front of her.

The door opened and Khalila beamed at her. Anit immediately lost her battle against her soft, squashy feelings. Blessed Isis, Khalila was beautiful.

“Archivist.”

Khalila’s sunny expression darkened. “Anit, really?”

“What, you’re not the Archivist anymore?” Anit breezed past Khalila as if entering her private residence was trivial.

“Oh! You brought flowers!” Their hands brushed together, and Khalila’s smile grew shy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cute?? first date??? adorable girls being awkward???


	10. Khalila/Parker

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Scholar Medica Parker only appears for two pages in chapter thirty of Smoke and Iron.
> 
> Why did I pick her? Because Khalila describes her in a very unusually intense and poetic way (quoted below), and I henceforth decided that Khalila is experiencing an IMMEDIATE crush on her. And now I ship them.
> 
> “She was a commanding older woman with sweeping walnut hair, eyes the colour of the open sea, and an attitude that Khalila could best liken to that of an angry, wounded lion. She took Wolfe’s letter, ripped it open with a sharply pointed fingernail lacquered crimson, and read the contents once rapidly, then twice slowly, before she spoke.”
> 
> khalila!! say brown-haired, blue-eyed and grumpy like a normal person!! i love her she's so poetic sometimes.
> 
> Content tags: epistolary format, condescension, having a crush, background Khalila/Dario

**From the journal of Scholar Medica Parker**

Our new Archivist came to see me today, to thank me for my part in spreading Wolfe’s word that night. Entirely unnecessary.

Nervous little slip of a thing. Barely six months a Scholar, and now this?

**From the journal of Archivist Khalila Seif**

I hope Scholar Parker enjoys her chocolates. When I asked Wolfe what she might like, he gave me the most incredulous look. 

Dario says I’m fussing over nothing, and keeps claiming I’m infatuated. Having feelings for him is quite enough distraction, and luckily telling him so made him change topics. 


	11. Annis/Naomi

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Readers: Naomi???
> 
> Naomi Ebele is a senior librarian who appears in Oxford when it's under siege in Ink and Bone, and then later in London at the end of Paper and Fire. Both times the Serapeum she's in is under attack in some way. The first time our main characters are allies to her, but by Paper and Fire they have run from the Library and she sees with dismay that they appear to have allied with Burners and book smugglers. 
> 
> Content tags: implied alcohol drinking, casual sex, bit of a guilt trip.

Naomi’s silver band was up for renewal. A year ago, it would have been simple. Back then the Library still followed the Doctrine of Ownership, and Naomi had never seen a printing press.

Everything had changed. 

“Thanks,” Naomi said, absentmindedly taking an offered drink.

The woman next to her smiled. For the first time, Naomi noticed the scars on her neck. The sign of another huge sea-change. Her complaints rang hollow now, in front of an ex-Obscurist.

The woman grinned, shark-like, and touched her scars. “Pity-fuck, then?”

Naomi apologised profusely, then looked again at her.

The sex was blissfully uncomplicated.


	12. Carole Vargas/Greta Jones

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Readers: Come on, Maz. Who and WHO?
> 
> Valid. These characters appear in Sword and Pen, as members of the new Curia. Carole Vargas gets a couple of mentions, while Greta Jones only gets one appearance. Vargas is the new Litterae Magnus (described as large, dour and South American), and Jones is the new Artifex Magnus (a "round, pleasant" American woman with a "rich, slow accent like melting butter"). 
> 
> They are my crack ship, for absolutely no reason at all as all true crack ships should be. 
> 
> Content tags: established relationship, dinner table arguments, hyperbolic claim to commit murder

“When I agreed to make Seif Archivist, I didn’t predict how much _Wolfe_ I was inviting into my life.”

Greta nodded along with the sound of her sweetheart’s irate voice, and carried on squinting at an equation.

“That man has a damned sight too much influence for someone who shirked the actual responsibility.”

Two second pause. Long enough for a response. “Yes, dear.” Greta raised her eyes and met Carole’s glare across the table. Belatedly, she tried to contribute. “Seif’s very good with advanced mathematics.”

“What good is that?! Calculating the likelihood of me finally murdering Wolfe after twenty-odd years?”


	13. Rijuta Khanna/Yeva Dudik

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Readers: ... ?? !? 
> 
> No, ok, that's fair. These two are by far the most minor characters so far. They appear only in one chapter of Ink and Bone, been tasked with keeping Jess away from Morgan’s carriage once she’s been captured by the Obscurist Magnus. Rijuta Khanna is described as a small Indian woman, with black hair tied elaborately at the crown of her head, and her companion is Yeva Dudik, “taller, broader and with an east-Asian cast to her features … watchful pale eyes in a sharp-featured face.”

Being assigned to the Iron Tower was usually the most boring of all possible rotations, mused Sergeant Rijuta Khanna. Just a whole lot of guard duty.

Yeva often pointed out that only trustworthy soldiers got posted there, because of the near-constant attempts at bribery by the Obscurists, but that was Yeva, always quietly seeing the best in a situation.

This, though, was more like it! A bit of excitement! Chasing after an escaped Obscurist! And now, time to stand and stare at the beautiful starry skies of exciting, dangerous, heretical France.

Perfect for snuggling up to Yeva, her beautiful girlfriend.


	14. Anit/Katja

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Readers: ... Katja? *squints*
> 
> Anit is already covered (check Chapter 9 of this) and Katja is one of her 'lieutenants' who appears in two scenes in Sword and Pen. She has a very cool head scar tattooed over with a snake - and more memorably, she is the character who Jess, out of nowhere, decides that he wants to have "bitter and carnal" sex with. 
> 
> Note: This is post-canon, Anit is over 18 here. 
> 
> Content tags: post-coital snuggling, sex mention, penetration mention, sex with your boss

_My father would kill me for this, too,_ Anit thought with satisfaction, as she idly licked salt off Katja’s overheated skin.

Her father might have approved of sex which didn’t risk pregnancy, but not of compromising her authority and personal security by consorting with somebody who she paid to keep her safe.

“I’m still your boss,” she said between kisses.

Katja snorted and rolled over. Anit greedily nuzzled the shifting muscles of her stomach.

“Is that a complaint about my capabilities, Red?” Katja pushed two fingers back inside Anit, making her squirm.

“Ugh, don’t call me that.”

“All right, boss.”


	15. Morgan Hault/Izumi Himura

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Izumi is one of the Ptolemy House postulants. She makes it through most of the postulancy, and then can’t do Translation, so fails the course. Really quite unfair. 
> 
> Content tags: alcohol mention, flirting, Morgan Lives AU

The Obscurist Magnus’ office was lit by soft glows. Izumi still preferred that to the new, harsh electricity.

“I used to have a bit of a crush on you.” Oops. Definitely one glass of wine too many, Izumi! She looked nervously across the coffee table at Morgan, and was relieved to see her grin.

“I noticed you staring, but I thought you had a crush on Jess and were _jealous_ of me!”

Izumi laughed and shook her head. She drained the last of her wine. This was definitely no longer a business meeting. “I thought you were beautiful.”

“Were?”

“Are.”


	16. Izumi/Sybilla

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It goes without saying, doesn't it, that in every drabble collection I must get inspired to do something that isn't a drabble. Here we go, 900 words of understandably angry Sybilla, who is actually I think the only female character canonically attracted to women, meeting Izumi a number of years after canon finishes. 
> 
> Content warnings: mentions of Iron Tower, mentions of slavery, slave collars, Morgan Hault's canon-compliant death, reference to Izumi's canon experience with failed Translation, grief, trauma.

Sybilla wandered the streets of Tokyo, looking for a seedy bookshop.

Why seedy? Because she’d sworn on the day that she left Alexandria to never participate in the machinations of the Library again.

It had been easy at first. Burner presses sprang up like weeds, eager for customers, filled to the brim with anti-Library screeds and copies of books that claimed to be true originals, never captured by the Archives.

But as the years started to trundle past, more of those early shops and stalls folded, or defected. Only the Library had the resources to easily copy and ship books wholesale.

The last seller Sybilla had talked to had proudly showed her their newest method of transporting those books. Or rather, he’d tried to. She’d sensed the scripts curdling the air around them before he’d undone the box and she’d fled, neck aching, stomach swirling, cursing any quintessence manipulator who had stayed in the claw of the Library.

She wasn’t even sure why she was in Japan. The country was a staunch Library ally. America and Russia had been much more interesting.

Aha! There was a Burner sign scratched into that doorpost. Perfect. She quickened her steps.

“Hello!”

At first, Sybilla didn’t slow. Didn’t realise that was aimed at her. Then she realised that it was Alexandrian Greek, albeit in a Japanese accent, and she lowered her head and walked faster.

“Hello! Girl in the yellow cloak!”

Sybilla spun on her heels, feeling hunted. “What?” she snarled in the voice’s general direction.

“Sorry! I didn’t mean to startle you!” The voice came from a Japanese woman hanging out of her shop front window a few shop fronts behind. It was a bookshop, but it had the Library ibis symbol displayed prominently on the door, so Sybilla had ignored it as she passed.

Sybilla stared in silence.

“Don’t go in there. It’s not really a bookshop. That cell of Burners got taken over. It’s a gangster front now. You don’t want to get on the wrong side of them.”

Sybilla snorted. “I’ll be fine.”

“No, really. Please. Come in. I’m not asking you to spend any money with me or anything.”

“Good, because I won’t.” For some reason, Sybilla found herself giving in and turning around. Probably it was as pathetic as the woman’s attractive appearance. “I don’t give money to Library scum,” she announced as she stepped through the door.

The woman looked at her calmly, with none of the defensiveness, anger or disbelief that usually greeted Sybilla being hostile to Library booksellers. She was shorter than Sybilla, which was unusual even in Japan, and close up she was even prettier than Sybilla had first thought. Oh dear.

“I can understand that.” Her gaze went straight to Sybilla’s neck. It wasn’t scarred like some of the older ex-prisoners had been, but she had to fight a constant battle between the urge to leave her neck free and to cover up the tell-tale overpigmented skin where her slave collar had rubbed. Today she’d left it bare.

Sybilla gave an ugly laugh. “No, you don’t.”

The woman nodded slowly, her expression sorrowful without being pitying. “No, I don’t understand the Obscurist experience.”

Sybilla flinched at that word, like she always did at the name that had been forcibly applied to her her whole life.

“But I was a Scholar postulant once, and my health was ruined for several months as a result of the Curia’s inexplicable decision to send postulants to an active war zone. So I’m not entirely pro-Library myself.”

Sybilla pointed at the symbol on the door and cocked her head challengingly. The woman pulled a wry face. It was cute.

“Khalila Seif is a force of nature, and I respect and like her deeply. We were postulants together, me and Jess and Thomas and the rest. And I support the distribution of originals.” She shrugged. “But I’ve seen what good people can be made to do when their movements are compelled by the weight of the Library, and I don’t trust that everything is suddenly better.”

Sybilla only half listened to the second bit of that. Possibly only a quarter listened. Because she knew those names, said so casually without terms of respect. She’d heard them from somebody else.

“Did you know Morgan, then?” Her voice didn’t wobble. She was proud of that, even though she expected she would dream of Morgan’s funeral service again tonight.

A shadow fluttered across the woman’s face, and she murmured something in Japanese far too quickly for Sybilla to even parse the syllables. “Yes, I did, though not as well. She was wonderful.”

“She _was_ ,” Sybilla blurted, then bit her lip. She hadn’t spoken about Morgan in a long time, and now, far away from where she had spent her life and Morgan had ended hers, she’d found a strange, nebulous connection. Words bubbled up inside her. “I knew her for a little while, in …” She flicked her hand dismissively, hoping the woman could read between the lines. The Tower gave her the same sick swooping feeling as ‘Obscurist’. “She left me in there, but …” She gave one breath to a chuckle. “I might have done the same, given the chance.”

The woman nodded, then bobbed her head in a bow. “I’m Izumi.” She smiled. She really was most absurdly pretty.

Sybilla took a breath, then took the risk. “I’m Sybilla.”


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is due to Rosalind getting me into this crack ship. It's vaguely based off the little romance fic she's started for them. Find that [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26375266/chapters/64243015)
> 
> I feel a bit bad that this is from Wolfe's POV - is that not out of the spirit of femslash feb? - but never mind. 
> 
> Content tags: mention of Callum Brightwell, allusion to him being utterly terrible and doubtless abusive towards his wife as well as his sons, Wolfe's POV, flowers, appreciation, accidental matchmaking, little hints of Wolfe/Celia because oh boy I ship that.

There was a fragrant bouquet of roses and lavender on Wolfe’s desk. The attached note read, _Thank you_. Signed _Naomi._

Well. This was embarrassing. He really hadn’t done anything deliberately of a matchmaking nature.

All right, he’d introduced Senior Librarian Naomi Ebele to Jess’ mother, Celia, a few months ago. But that had been with Jess’ permission, and strictly professional, regarding a Library-aligned bookshop in London.

He hadn’t even known Celia was attracted to women. She’d seemed attracted to him, before, but probably any human became appealing as a potential route away from Callum Brightwell.

 _Look after her_ , he replied.

**Author's Note:**

> Check out my plans in advance here:
> 
> https://thegreatlibraryfangirl.tumblr.com/post/637764659194314752/femslash-february-plans


End file.
